Page 54 of Grave Games

“Sleep has nothing to do with what we get up to in bed.”

I didn’t say anything, just continued to bounce lightly while looking at him.

He sighed. “Michael Valentine. Want to see my driver’s license?”

Valentine. How perfect for a man named Romeo. “How did you get into this life, Michael? Are you a legacy like Tyr and Marvel—”

“Don’t say that bastard’s name in my presence,” came the surprisingly ominous growl, before he took a slow breath and got whatever was rampaging inside him on a tight leash. “And no, I’m not a legacy. I grew up in the civilian world, with parents who run a small restaurant up in Waukegan.”

I blinked. “Really? Do they serve club sandwiches with extra bacon, French fries with brown gravy and extra pickle spears?”

“If you ask for it, yeah, and that’s still my favorite meal whenever I drop in on them. But I never had any interest in following in their footsteps. When I was a kid, I raced.”

“You raced? You mean like running?”

He shook his head. “I started out like any other kid addicted to speed. I was a BMX champion for two years running. Then motocross, and I did that until I was sixteen or so and won everything in sight. From there I moved on to road racing and speedways and got a shit-ton of sponsors, but it was all so… boring. I kept looking for bigger challenges and one day I ran across Tyr, who also likes to race. We raced, I won, he swore I cheated—I didn’t—and we fought. By the end of it, we both had bloody noses and a promise to race again the next day. Instead, I was kind of adopted by Tyr and his brother Loki, and before I knew it I was part of the Chicago Gravediggers. But by then Hades was just starting to take over, so we jumped ship and started our own chapter. You know the rest.”

I didn’t, actually. But that was enough for now. “And do you really think I should be mad at you, Michael?”

He grimaced, whether at his name or the question I didn’t know. “I’ve had one helluva bad effect on your life since you decided to go all-in with me.”

“The truth is you do affect my life in all the good ways. My brother, however, is another story. Whatever Josh does with his life… it’s going to splash some kind of dirt on me as long as Hades is in power. That jerk uses innocent family members and bystanders to coerce people into doing what he wants, because he’s a tyrant and a bully. Eventually his way of conducting business is going to do him in, since hurting civilians is something the police won’t tolerate.”

“Oh, Hades is going to be gone long before the police get a crack at him,” he said, and the snarl lacing his words made me shiver. “He used up his last straw a couple haystacks ago.”

I nodded. No surprise there. “My point is, if I’m angry at anyone, it’s Hades, but there’s nothing I can do about him. So instead, I’m choosing to be grateful for the things in my life that bring me joy.”

“And what is it that brings you joy?”

I gestured at the clean, quaint little room. “A roof over my head. HGTV. You.”

The shadows in his sea-tossed eyes lightened. “Me?”

“And HGTV.”

“Tease.” The last of the shadows ebbed away, and he smiled at me. “Do presents also bring you joy?”

I stopped bouncing. “Presents? Is it Christmas?”

“Nah, but Christmas is only eleven months away. Might as well get a jump on things before it creeps up on me.” He turned to the pile of supplies that had been neatly stacked by the door and plucked a box off the top of it. It was wide, sort of flat and rectangular, and he handed it to me like there might be a bomb in it. “Open it up.”

“I feel like it’s going to explode.”

“Open it, Shiloh.”

Again with my full name. I hadn’t yet figured out if he did that when he was upset or simply wanted to get my attention. Suddenly swamped with nerves, I put the box on my lap, pried the top open and pushed the tissue paper aside.

The rich scent of leather hit me first, and in an instant I knew what it was even before I’d fully uncovered it. The back of a leather jacket looked up at me from its nest in the box, with the Gravedigger emblem of a Grim Reaper’s sickle piercing a grinning skull, very different from the green and black skeletal emblem of the Chicago Gravediggers. The curved patch—or rocker—on top said, “PROPERTY OF” and the rocker beneath it said, “ROMEO.”

Property of Romeo.

I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to get used to that, after a lifetime of being taught that people could never beproperty. But I had at least learned that this wasn’t a transactional event of people unwillingly being sold to other people. No. In Romeo’s badass culture, this jacket represented a mutual exchange of two people choosing each other because they knew they belonged together.

If I looked at it from that standpoint, this was the equivalent of an engagement ring, which meant Romeo was asking me a very important question.

“Is…” I had to clear my throat to make it work properly. “Is this for real?”

His scowl was borderline furious. “Do you think I’d have this made as some kind of joke?”

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